TED – iLearn Technology

EDpuzzle: Like Video in the Classroom 2.0

February 6, 2014February 10, 2014Kelly Tenkely4 Comments10097 views

What it is: EDpuzzle is a neat new educational site to help you better utilize video in your classroom for learning. You can find and crop video to use only what you need, add audio notes within the video or do some voice over work for a video, and you can embed questions throughout the video to track student understanding. EDpuzzle collects data as students watch and interact with the video. You can see if and when a student watched the video, and see the progress of all students through the answers to embedded questions.

How to use EDpuzzle in your classroom: What makes EDpuzzle great is the level of freedom given in cropping, sharing, and tracking video use in the classroom. EDpuzzle enhances the “flipped” classroom by allowing you to embed formative assessment directly into your videos. As students watch, you can check understanding and ensure active watching vs. passive watching. In a flipped scenario, this gives you the ability to completely tailor a lesson the next day based on the formative assessment results you get from homework. This is truly utilizing assessment to inform instruction (which is the point of assessment!).

EDpuzzle can be used in conjunction with videos that you have made for your students, or with videos that you find. I like using video to introduce students to a brand new topic or idea. Well-created video has the ability to quickly and succinctly help students dive into new learning and formulate new questions and lines of inquiry. For example, when Anastasis Jr. High started our last inquiry block about “How the World Works” and explored the topic of food and farming, they started by watching the documentary Food, Inc. This was a great way to launch their thinking and lines of questioning about where our food comes from. Out of that video, students chose different lines of inquiry to explore and research. EDpuzzle would be a good way for students to help others see where their line of inquiry started from. Students could grab the clip of the documentary that intrigued them, and embed audio to show their thought process as they watched. Sort of a Saved-by-the-Bell Zack Morris “Time out” moment where they can describe their line of thinking.

For primary teachers, EDpuzzle could be used as part of a guided reading center. YouTube has lots of great read-along videos. (You can also create your own based on class reading!) Use these videos along with EDpuzzle to check for comprehension. As the video plays, embed questions to check for understanding. Students can independently go through the guided reading (or Close reading) activity, while you work one-on-one with other reading groups. Rotate the reading groups throughout the week so that each student gets the opportunity to go through the EDpuzzle guided reading activity, and each group gets one-on-one time with you. This is a fantastic way to maximize your time and get valuable feedback from all student learning. EDpuzzle could also be used in this way as a science center (with a video pertaining to an experiment or new learning), a math center, etc. I love using center rotations because it ensures that I have time to work closely with each group.

For secondary students, use EDpuzzle is a great way to check for understanding. It is also a wonderful way for students to create and demonstrate understanding. EDpuzzle would be ideal for sub days. I always dreaded being away from the classroom because it was essentially a lost day. Even if the substitute did EXACTLY what I asked, I missed the opportunity to see my students work and think. EDpuzzle would give you the ability to “teach” remotely and embed the same questions and promptings you would give if you were live in the classroom. While you won’t get to hear all of the discussion, you will have some feedback to better understand how your students were thinking.

With documentary-type videos, EDpuzzle can be used to embed writing prompts. Record a prompt throughout the video so that students can pause and write out their reflections and thoughts. I find that good documentaries are often SO packed full of good things that by the end of the video, only the last 10 minutes get well-reflected on. The documentary Baraka would be an incredible video to do this with!

Have you seen Vi Hart’s YouTube channel? I am obsessed! I love the way that she goes through math in a casual stream-of-conscious type approach. Embed related practice math problems based on the topics that Vi is sharing in her videos. As students get those light-bulb moments of, “oh, that is how that works!” capitalize on the new understanding by giving them a place to put it into practice and try it out.

Do you record your students learning? EDpuzzle could be a fantastic way to record audio feedback to the videos that they upload. These can then be shared with parents and students for review.

Tips: Don’t have access to YouTube at school? No worries! You can still use EDpuzzle with your students. EDpuzzle lets you search for video by topic, or pull video from Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, National Geographic, TED, Veritasium, and Numberphile as well. LOTS of incredible learning just waiting to happen!

The Future We Will Create: all the in-between important stuff

March 20, 2013Kelly Tenkely2 Comments21217 views

A few years ago I watched the documentary TED: The Future We Will Create. Being a fan of TED talks, I was curious to learn more about the behind the scenes of TED talks and how the conference came to be. I had heard snippets here and there that the TED conference was like a boys club…you had to have money and “be” somebody to get into a live event. The documentary pulled back the curtain a little on the intentionality of the way that TED conferences are set up. They are intentionally packed with entrepreneurs and successful people from various walks of life to bring together change makers. The actual speakers may not be well known (at least not prior to the talk), they have a limited time to speak, and they share an inspirational message. But TED isn’t really about the talks, TED is really about the talks that happen in between the talks. It is about those serendipitous moments that happen when people are exposed to a shared inspiration and then have opportunity to dream about it together. The magic is in those moments when people with different perspectives come together and share their thinking from that unique vantage point. It is really about the in between moments, that seemingly empty and unimportant time. TED does something else that I wasn’t aware of, they offer one TED speaker a “prize”. Only the prize isn’t really a prize (not in the way we typically think about prizes), instead it is that this person gets to make a wish. They get to cast a vision and a “what-if.” They get to challenge the audience to solve a problem that matters to them. Then comes the incredible part- these people actually use their unique gifts and talents and perspective to help make it so. World changing. A future that we create. Together.

As I was pulling together resources for our current inquiry block about “sharing the planet,” I came across several fantastic TED talks that could act like a catalyst for deeper thinking and additional curiosity. As I watched each video, I kept thinking about the behind the scenes, the in-between talks that aren’t documented. The change happening as a result.

Then it hit me, we could do this at Anastasis. We could watch these talks together, and then allow for the in-between talks. We could be intentional and let our students engage in the discussion, the serendipitous moments of one thing leading to another, and another. We could give our students time to just talk and wonder and discover together. We could narrow it down to 3 or 4 TED talks and provide our students with serendipitous in-between. We could open up the opportunity for our students to come up with the “wish” or challenge that the others would work to make happen. We could empower our students to go through this same process and then watch them use their unique perspective, gifts and talents to find solutions and dream up new possibilities.

I’m excited to try this. I believe that we are in the midst of genius every day at Anastasis. These kids are really incredible. I want to see what unfolds when we offer just a little inspiration related to our inquiry and then give them some space to just explore and talk. I want them to see that when hunches collide, BIG world changing ideas happen. I want them to understand that they are world changers.

Has anyone else done this with students?

I think that this will be a starting point. For now we will watch talks. Next year, I would love to have our students plan their own talks. I want to invite the best-and-brightest from around the world to come listen to our talks. I want to provide the in-between moments where change is enacted.

Stay tuned…

TED-Ed: Lessons (videos) worth sharing

April 26, 2012Kelly Tenkely2 Comments5888 views

What it is: I have long been a TED talk fan, so much so that I started a lunch group at my previous school called TED Talk Tuesdays where teachers could gather over lunch, watch TED Talks and discuss it’s implication on education. TED has a brand new education site that I am excited about. TED-ed is a collection of educational video lessons that have been animated. These lessons can be used as a supplement in any classroom. Each video on the TED-ed site has an associated lesson, a Quick Quiz with multiple choice comprehension questions, Think which asks questions to help students think more critically about what they have watched, and Dig Deeper which helps students to explore the topic further. In addition to the videos, TED-ed gives educators the ability to “flip” videos. You can use, tweak, or completely re-do any lesson that is featured on TED-Ed, or even create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. You can re-title a lesson to fit your classroom, add context, questions and follow-up suggestions, and create a custom URL for your video lesson. You can even track your student’s progress to see who has viewed the assigned video, the number of questions they attempted, the answers they provided, and the answers they got correct.

How to integrate TED-Ed into the classroom: TED-Ed is a fantastic new resource for the classroom. The videos can be used for flip teaching. Flip teaching changes up the classroom model. Normally students come to school to get instruction and do their practice work at home as homework. In a flipped teaching model, the instruction is watched at home as “homework” and the practice happens in the classroom where students can receive teacher support. This means that the focus in the classroom is on higher-order thinking and learning skills instead of on instruction. How novel. 🙂 Student can come to class ready for deeper inquiry, critical thinking, discussion with classmates, collaboration and get more personalized attention from the teacher. You maximize classroom time by “going home” with the students.

Video is a great medium for learning because it allows students to learn at their own pace and gives them the ability to replay as many times as they need to. Visuals are always useful when learning something new, video is a great medium because of the way that it helps enhance understanding through the use of visuals.

Videos are searchable by those that have been featured, those that are part of a series or by subject. Students can learn about the arts, business/economics, design/engineering/technology, health, literature/language, math, psychology, science/technology, and social studies. The library will continue to grow as teachers flip the videos and TED-ed adds content from educators around the world.

The videos are great in a flipped classroom model but can also be used within the classroom. Videos can be watched and discussed as a whole-class or put on classroom computers as a learning center. When I taught second grade, I made sure that I had time individually with my students each week. In the mornings, my students worked on groups with “tub work” to make this time possible with individual students. These videos would make a great “second teacher” in a blended learning classroom where students could continue their learning while you work with students individually.

Tips: Remember, if you don’t find a video that meets your classroom needs, you can always flip any video you find on YouTube!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using TED-ed in your classroom!

iTunes U: Creative Problem Solving course from TED

February 9, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1969 views

What it is: iTunes U is a true gem that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. iTunes U is a collection of learning from around the world, available for free at your finger tips. It just doesn’t get better than that! Recently I found a new iTunes U course that I had to share with all of my edu friends. Creative Problem Solving is a course by TED (you know that really super, great conference “talks”) that collects great TED talks about creative problem solving in one convenient place. “These speakers from TED assess the prevailing model of education reform by answering the critical question: How do we create educational environments that maximize how students harness their creative and problem-solving potential? Relevant areas of interest, study and coursework include: Education Policy, Curriculum Development, Assessment, Pedagogy, Career and Technical Education, Project-Based Learning, Whole Child Education, 21st Century Skills, and Multiple Intelligences.” These TED talks have had a significant impact on me and have guided many of my thoughts and “hunches” about education. The collection includes Tim Brown, Emily Pilloton, Gever Tulley, Dan Meyer, Kathryn Schultz, and not one but two from Sir Ken Robinson. 7 episodes in one place for a free course on education that will blow your mind and fire up your passion for education reform.

How to integrate iTunes U Creative Problem Solving into the classroom: iTunes U is a great place to learn for both you and your students! This particular collection is a great place to feed your educator soul and boost your own professional development. If you have the ability to shape PD at your school, this is an AWESOME addition to your time together as a staff. In the past, I have done TED Talk Tuesdays and Webspiration Wednesdays over the lunch break with other teachers. We gathered in the library where there was plenty of room to sit, relax, eat and learn together. The discussion that ensued after watching the TED talk was always rich. This is a GREAT way to build culture and community among your staff.

Over the summer, I started every morning with a TED talk to start my day off with a healthy dose of inspiration. I think I will re-instate this habit while I get ready for school.

At Anastasis, we often share videos as a staff. They aren’t always this inspirational, sometimes we share clips from SNL (HVR, HVR! “Write that down.”) or YouTube. Videos have a wonderful way of connecting us and giving us shared language and inside jokes. Gotta love that!

Tips: TED has other great iTunes U courses including Understanding Happiness and Mastering Tech-Artistry. Next on my list!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using iTunes U Creative Problem Solving in your classroom!

Fold it: Solve Problems for Science and Change the World

January 14, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3422 views

What it is: Fold it is a puzzle game based on science that helps change the world. Download the Fold It game and puzzles for free and contribute to the understanding of protein folding and amino acids. By playing this game, students take part in actually contributing to science. The implications of the Fold It game are huge, playing this game helps scientists better understand protein structure prediction and protein design. This means that by playing a little puzzle game, your students are contributing to better understanding of the role proteins play in diseases such as HIV, cancer, and Alzheimers, and even bio fuel technology. Scientists collect data from the game to find out if humans pattern recognition abilities and puzzle solving abilities make them more efficient than computers at pattern folding tasks. If it turns out that humans are more efficient, human strategies can be applied to computers to make the process even faster.

How to integrate Fold It into the classroom: If your students are currently learning about cells, proteins, amino acid, and biological make up, Fold It is an incredible way for them to really understand all of these working parts, while contributing to science. The puzzle and pattern nature of this game should appeal to a wide range of students…who doesn’t enjoy a good exercise in pattern recognition and problem solving? On the about page, your students can read the background “briefing” about the game and the science that they are contributing to by playing the game. There is also a Fold It wiki with great links for more in-depth learning and understanding. Not only will your students be learning important science concepts (I’m talking the building blocks of life here!), they will also be actually contributing to science by playing. How cool is that?! There is a large collection of puzzles with new puzzles being released and completed puzzles expiring. Don’t know anything about biology? No problem, you can play the game without understanding the biology concepts behind it (although for me, knowing the background of what I am looking at makes it that much cooler!). Check out the blog where you can read the results of how the game play has affected real science.

Tips: The idea of building games to impact the real world is incredible to me, the first time I had considered this was when I watched this TED talk by Jane McGonigal. If you haven’t seen it yet it is worth a watch! You can read my original post about this TED talk here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Fold It in your classroom.

TED Talk Tuesday: Games and Fun

July 13, 2010July 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments5294 views

In today’s TED Talk Tuesday, Jane McGonigal offers the premise that games (video games) can change the world in meaningful and positive ways.

She builds her case convincingly. I am currently reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive. There are some similar ties between the two ideas. Blissful productivity, we are more productive when we do things that we have to work at, and think about. When we have some direction and there is meaning behind it.

The principles learned through gaming can be used to solve real world problems. I can’t help but wonder what implications this line of thought has for education. How can we change the daily school “game” so that students don’t just sit on the sidelines, but experience “epic wins”. We all want to know that what we do matters and matters deeply. Games give us this feeling that what we are doing is having an important effect.

Learning should be an act of play. It seems to me that if we can tell a difference between learning and play we aren’t doing one of the right. Consider babies in any species, how do they learn to do life? Through play.

I’m not sure that I can envision what this looks like in the practical sense in the school setting. But I think that McGonigal has something here. What do you think, what could games and fun do for education? How can we use from what we know about games to change education and, in doing so, change the world?

TED Talk Tuesday: Tom Wujec Build a Tower, Build a Team

June 22, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments2899 views

The group that consistently fails at the marshmallow task: recent graduates of business school.
Business students are trained to find the single right plan and then execute it. The problem with this strategy is that they wait for the last minute to add their marshmallow to the top of the structure and when their plan fails, it is a crisis.
The group that consistently succeeds at the marshmallow task: recent graduates of kindergarten.
Kindergarten students start with a model and they build successive prototypes of their structure. They always keep their marshmallow on top. They have multiple opportunities to refine their structure until it is working. With each version of the prototype, students are getting instant feedback about what works and what doesn’t and they can adjust accordingly.
Kids don’t spend time trying to be CEO of Spaghetti Inc. They aren’t jockeying for power, they are working together creatively and having fun.

What stands out to me about the data that Tom Wujec shares, is not that architects and engineers build the best towers (as he says, we would expect that), but that kindergartners are not very far behind. This makes me wonder about what important things we are deprogramming kids to do as we send them through the education system. If the education system was really working, I would expect that adults would be able to construct the best, highest towers. I would expect that those with the most education would build the best towers. But as we see, this isn’t the case. In school we teach students that everything has a correct answer. Sometimes that answer means filling in the “c” on a bubble test, and sometimes it means getting your teacher to nod and say “that’s right”. School has become a game of “guess what the teacher is thinking”. As a result, we have students who can come up with one correct solution to any problem. In the real world, we often need more than one right solution. Many times we need several solutions and creative thinking applied to the problem. Our most recent example of this is the BP oil spill. I can’t help but wonder what great solutions kindergartners would come up with that adults aren’t even considering because we have been deprogrammed to think that way.
What does this mean for schools? It means that we need more opportunities for students to explore multiple solutions to a problem, it means that we offer kids the chance to discuss and stop asking the one answer questions all the time. Sometimes there is one correct answer, but in life that isn’t always the case. Students need to be given the chance to explore both options.

(As a side note, it is interesting to me that when the incentive of a prize was offered, not one team had a standing structure. I am working my way through Daniel Pink’s book Drive right now and it mirrors what he says in the book.)

TED Talk Tuesday: Tim Brown urges designers to think big

June 15, 2010June 15, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3820 views

Today’s #edchat discussion on Twitter was all about training kids as critical thinkers. I believe that we are losing students as critical thinkers because in our current model of education, where we are standardizing education with tests, we teach kids that there is one correct answer to every question. We limit their thinking to what we have already determined is an acceptable answer to the question. This is extremely limiting. Critical thinking means that we aren’t satisfied with the easy answer, we think about multiple solutions to the problem and even think of additional questions. We approach a problem differently, more creatively.

In today’s TED Talk, Tim Brown talks about his journey in design and his tendency to think about problems on a small scale, limiting himself to the obvious answers and a single solution. Design wasn’t always this way, design used to be big. Design thinking solves problems and works to create world changing innovations. It seems to me that there is a strong correlation with what Tim refers to as Design Thinking and what we call critical thinking. Roger Martin calls this integrative thinking, the ability to exploit opposing ideas and opposing constraints to create new solutions. Isn’t this what we are asking our students to do when we are looking for critical thinking? What we really want students to do is think as designers. When I watch children who haven’t yet entered the classroom, I notice a strong correlation between the way a child thinks and the way a designer thinks. They are questioners, tinkerers, and are never satisfied with one solution.

Design thinking could be our model for critical thinking in the classroom, but beyond that design thinking could be our solution to reform in education. Exploiting opposing ideas and opposing constraints to create new solutions.

Design is human centered, it starts with what humans need or might need. It means understanding culture and context. From destination to active participation that is meaningful and productive. Value is added through collaborative experiences and not through monetary gains alone (think Twitter). In times of change we need new thinking and new ideas. We are in the midst of massive change and we need to rethink what we accept as basic fundamentals. We need new choices because our current options are becoming obsolete. We need to take a divergent approach and come up with something that hasn’t been done before. What is the question we are trying to answer? What is the design brief for education.

The first step is to start asking the right questions. (I think #edchat does an honorable job of this!) What are the right questions?

TED Talk Tuesday: Bring on the Learning Revolution

June 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely13 Comments3345 views

Since I won’t be with the CHC staff hosting Webspiration Wednesday lunches, I thought I would institute TED Talk Tuesday and share an inspiring TED Talk each Tuesday with all of you. TED has a great tag line “ideas worth spreading”. This non-profit brings together people from Technology, Entertainment, and Design. (The scope of the talks is actually much, much wider.) TED.com is a free collection of the very best talks with new talks are being added all the time. TED believes “passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.”

Todays TED Talk Tuesday is dedicated to Sir Ken Robinson. You may remember this Webspiration Wednesday sharing of Sir Ken’s Schools Kill Creativity. This is Sir Ken Robinson’s newest TED Talk, Bring on the Learning Revolution.

Sir Ken Robinson has such a way with words, the message he shares is profound. I agree with the summation that reform is of no use, the evolution of a broken model isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We need a revolution where education is transformed into something else entirely. I have watched this video several times since its release, about a month ago, and each time I am struck by something new. This time what stood out most for me was the talk about innovation. Innovation is hard because it means doing something that is challenging, it isn’t the easy or obvious solution. It challenges what we take for granted, things that seem obvious. Just before beginning this post, I read an excellent article by Blogging Alliance member Chris at EdTechSwami. He writes: What Educators Can Learn From Steve Jobs. I think Chris makes some excellent points in his post, it all comes back to innovation. Apple doesn’t usually do the expected, in fact sometimes they purposefully step away from what is expected and what seems logical. The reason is that they are finding new solutions and even creating new problems. They are looking to the future and anticipating what is coming next. Sir Ken helps us to see that innovation is difficult because there are so many things in this life that we take for granted. We don’t even think about them any more because they are the way that we expect them to be. It is only when someone comes along and points out a new way of doing something that we realize we have been taking it for granted. In schools we take for granted that there is a linearity to education. We start in kindergarten and move through until we reach the 12th grade, at which point we are encouraged to attend college. What else do we take for granted in education? Classrooms, grades, tests, desks, handwriting, curriculum, blackboards (IWB’s), policy makers, NCLB…

Today I was able to join in on the midday Twitter #edchat discussion. The topic was reform in education and how teachers could be a louder voice. The discussion was a great one with a number of good ideas. I wonder if we are approaching the topic in an innovative enough way? We tend to frame our answers with what we think might be possible. We frame our answers so as to play nice in the policy makers game. What if we didn’t do things their way? What if we came up with a new way? What if we taught kids how to be advocates for their education and learning and gave them a voice? I threw this out there during the #edchat and @bliarteach reminded me of the big push there was for learning about recycling in school. Kids became passionate about recycling and saving the earth, they took it home with them. Soon families were recycling and changing their garbage habits. This worked. I was one of those kids who made my mom wash every piece of aluminum foil so that I could bring it to school and add it to our big ball of recycled foil. I was the kid who was adamant about separating plastic, glass, and paper. I became the adult who still does this. Involving kids in advocating for their own education and learning has the added benefit of helping them to realize the importance of their education. Suddenly they aren’t learning because we tell them to, they are learning because they believe in learning. They have a pride and ownership in their own education. The great thing about involving kids in the discussion is that they don’t take so much for granted. They ask questions and challenge the way that we think.

So, lets figure out all the things we take for granted in education. When we have a clear picture of those things, lets work together to find new solutions. Lets revolutionize education together, lets make the revolution viral. If you can think of something that we take for granted, leave it in the comments below.

(Raise of hands, how many of you are wearing a wrist watch?) 🙂 Yeah, me too.